Signature Stop, Photoshop signature tutorials, renders, tag tutorials and signature backgrounds!

Hey everyone, we’re going to create this awesome radiohead signature, designed by a great artist named castro. He has designed several amazing tags that we will be featuring soon. This signature makes good use of blending settings to color the signature, and the pen tool to design some good flow around our focal point. Before you start this tag, make sure you have some good original brushes ready to use.

the outcome of this radiohead signature tutorial:

This is the stock we are going to use for the tag, feel free to use this for your tag:

Here’s another one you can use:

We’re going to add some stock on top. You can use the liquify tool to change this around, or the burn tool to change the colors a little. Make sure there’s some lighting right around our main character, and the area around itis a little more darkened.

Set this layers blending mode to Lighten, if you have some lighting on the stock thats close to your character, you should get an outcome similar to this:

Create a new layer, and apply the image (Image > Apply Image). We’re going to use some splatter brushes to erase the background., and move it around a little. This is what’s left of our bg shown on a white background:

This is the layer shown on the background. We’re going to change the blending mode to Lighten afterwards:

blending mode on lighten:

Create a new layer, and select Image > Apply Image. We’re going to add some coloring. Press CTRL + U to bring up the Hue/Saturation window, and play around with the settings. First, we’re going to set an orange color. Make sure you have Colorize checked:

The result shown below:

Grab your eraser tool again, and start erasing sections with a splatter brush or whatever brush you like. Make sure you remove part of the focal, in our case his face. We’re going to leave this uncolored.

Our layer after erasing shown on a black background:

Change this layers blending mode to darken. Our result:

Repeat this step, however pick a different color this time. Remember to remove the section that cover a good looking focal, which in this tag is his face.

Set this layers blending mode to Darken:

Grab a dark bright color (we picked #00064c) and fill a new layer. We’re going to set this layer to Lighten, and reduce its Fill.

On the photoshop layer panel, reduce the layers Fill to 65%:

Our result after reducing the fill and changing the opacity:

Make a new layer, and use the eyedropper tool to select a bright color on your canvas. Brush near your focal to create some lighting, slightly brush around him to create extra flow:

Set this layers blending mode to overlay:

We’re going to add some adjustment layers. We’re going to add a Color Balance layer, a Channel Mixer and a Selective color layer. However, rather than showing every setting used in these adjustment layers, I’ve uploaded a PSD file with these layers so you can take a look at them yourself. More importantly though, try creating your own and experimenting with colors.

In your Color balance layer, select Shadows, change settings, select Midtones, repeat. Do the same for Highlights.

You can download the psd file of these adjustment layers Here. Remember to play around with its settings.

Our result after using Color balance:

Our result after applying the Channel mixer layer:

Result after applying the selective color layer:

Apply the image on a new layer (Image > Apply Image). We’re going to blur the areas that look too sharp and strong. You can use the blur tool for this to blur select areas and to keep the focal point (his face) sharpened.

Here’s an animation to show you what we’ve changed (mainly his chest and arms):

We’re going to use the pen tool to create some nice lines around our focal. Select your pen tool, and pick these settings on the toolbar:

use the pen tool to randomly create some lines around the focal point:

We’re going to stroke this line with a soft 1 pixel brush. Select your brush, and pick the top left brush in your layer panel. Make sure it is set to size 1. This is a soft brush and will produce a good looking result if you check Simulate Pressure. Use the eyedropper tool to pick up a matching bright color.

Go to Paths on your layer pallette, and right click the Work Path. Select Stroke Path:

in the dropdown menu, use the brush and make sure you check Simulate Pressure:

Our result, we’ve set this layer to Lighten:

We’re going to repeat the previous step, however selecting a larger and softer brush this time:

Our result (don’t worry we know it looks like crap)

Change this layers blending mode to Linear Dodge:

Create a new layer, and with a large brush, tap a few times in around your focal with a bright color. Then tap twice with a smaller dark brush, to create some detail in the brushing. Our brushing is shown below:

We’re setting this layers blending mode to Color Dodge.

We’re nearly done, apply the image on a new layer, and select Filter > Sharpen. If it’s too sharp, reduce the fill to about 50%.

The colors on the microphone still look a little off, so we’re going to apply the image on a new layer again. Then, select an area with bright colors and detail, and copy this. Paste this on top, and move it to the side a little:

Change its blending mode to darken, and if you’re satisfied, you’re done! Our final result:

We hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial, there’s way more to come soon! If you enjoyed this tutorial, please leave a comment or reply to support us!